12 WAYS TO GET LANGUAGE LEARNERS TALKING

1. Who’s Telling the Truth? Have each student write three

facts about themselves that nobody in the class knows on a
piece of paper. Make sure each student includes their name on
the top of the page. Collect the sheets of paper and bring three
students to the front of the room. Read aloud one of the facts
that is true for one of these three students. 

All three claim that the fact is theirs, and the class then
proceeds to question them in an attempt to determine who is
telling the truth and who is lying. Each student is allowed to ask
one question to one of the three students. After a round of
questioning, the students guess who is telling the truth.

2. Variations on the game Taboo: For variation 1, create a

PowerPoint presentation with a noun on each slide. Have one
student come to the front of the room and sit with their back to
the PowerPoint. The rest of the students take turns describing
the words on the slides, and the student at the front has to guess
them.

For variation 2, separate the students into groups of four or

five. Place a pile of cards with random nouns in the center of
each group. Have students take turns describing a noun for their
group members to guess. The group member who guesses
correctly keeps the card, so there’s competition to see who
has the most cards at the end of the game.

Variation 3 is for advanced speakers. Separate the class into two

teams. Students are given a word to describe to their teammates,
in addition to a list of words that they cannot use in their
description. Each student should have two to three minutes to
see how many words their teammates can guess.
3. Descriptive drawing activity: Pair up the students and
give each student a picture, placing it face down so partners
cannot see each other’s cards. They must describe the picture
for their partner to draw.

4. Comic strip descriptions: Give each student a portion of a

comic strip. Without showing their pictures to one another, the
students should attempt to describe their image, and put the
comic strip into the correct order. After about 10 minutes, the
students can guess the order, show one another their portion,
and see if they were correct.

5. Secret word: Students are given a random topic and a

random word that is unrelated to the topic. The students must
hide the word in a speech about the topic—they’re trying to
make sure the other students can’t guess the secret word. The
other students listen carefully to the speech and attempt to guess
the secret word.

6. Debates: Give each student a piece of paper with “agree”

written on one side and “disagree” on the other side. Read aloud
a controversial statement, and have each student hold up
their paper showing the agree or disagree side depending on
their opinion. Choose one student from each side to explain
their position and participate in a short debate.

7. Impromptu speaking: Prepare a list of topics that students

will be able to talk about. Split the class into two teams, and
have each student choose a number—that’s the order they will
go in. Each student will respond to a statement without
preparation. They must continue speaking for 45 seconds. As
the student is speaking, the other team listens for moments of
hesitation, grammatical mistakes, and vocabulary mistakes. If
the other team can correctly identify an error, they get a point.
8. Desert island activity: Give each student a piece of paper
and tell them to draw an item—any item. Collect the drawings
and pass them out again; no student should receive their own
drawing.

Next, tell the students that they’ve been stranded on a desert

island, and only half of the class can survive and continue to
inhabit the island. The only thing each student will have on the
island is the item depicted in the drawing given to them, and
their goal is to convince the class that they should survive based
on that item.

9. Storytelling activity: Bring four students to the front of the

classroom. Three of them should sit in a row, and one should
stand behind them and act as a controller. Give the controller a
stack of cards with nouns written on them.

The controller will hand a noun to one of the three students,

who will start to tell a story. The student continues telling the
story until the controller decides to hand another noun to
another student, who will then take over the story.

10. Two Truths, One Lie: Each student should write three
statements about themselves on a piece of paper. Two of them
should be true, and one should be a lie. Students read their three
statements, and their classmates question them to try to
determine which statement is a lie.

11. True/false storytelling: Give each student a piece of paper

with either “true” or “false” written on it. Each student should
tell the class a story that is true or false, depending on which
word they received, and the class must guess whether it’s
true. To add to the activity, you can allow the other students to
question the student telling the story.
12. I Have Never...: All students in the class should start this
activity holding five fingers in the air (you can use less fingers
to do this more quickly). The student who goes first tells the
class one thing that they have never done. The students who
have done that activity should put a finger down, and tell the
class a story about this activity. A student is out of the game
when all of their fingers are down.